USOC Delegates Gather On Rocky Mountain High

By Christine BrennanBy Christine BrennanFebruary 8, 1985

The United States Olympic Committee is on a roll and knows it.

Half a year after the Los Angeles Olympics ended, the USOC's House of Delegates meets Friday, Saturday and Sunday at the Broadmoor Hotel next door to the Rocky Mountains to elect officers, usher in a new executive director, decide how to distribute about $6.8 million to reimburse the nations who attended the 1984 Summer Olympics, and, perhaps most important, avoid a shift in momentum.

"It's certainly the aftermath of a triumph," USOC public information director Michael Moran said. "The mood is very optimistic."

The meetings are expected to be so upbeat that the two biggest Olympic issues of the past month -- pre-Olympic drug testing and U.S. cyclists' blood doping -- have been snuck onto Saturday's agenda labeled as "Report by Sports Medicine Council."

Council chairman Irving Dardik's report is anxiously awaited, but no action will be taken on it, Moran said.

"(The testing) is simply something that happened during the four-year period," Moran said. "This is like a political convention. It won't come up here. Neither will blood doping."

John B. (Jack) Kelly, a bronze medalist in rowing in the 1956 Olympics, a former Sullivan Award winner and first vice president of the USOC, will be installed as the new USOC president this weekend. He will replace former Treasury Secretary William E. Simon.

Also, Col. F. Don Miller, the executive director who oversaw sweeping changes in USOC funding, facilities and rules in the past 12 years, is leaving to become president of the new U.S. Olympic Foundation, a permanent source of funding for amateur athletics.

Another Miller will replace him: George D. Miller of Omaha, Neb., a former Air Force general who played soccer at the Naval Academy.

Four years ago, at these same meetings, the USOC was coming off the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Funding was a major concern. So was morale.

How things have changed.

"It's such a stark contrast," Moran said. "There are not a whole lot of controversies on the horizon for the next four years."